Scientists at Northwestern University have determined the molecular structure of a viral protein, the parainfluenza virus 5 fusion (F) protein. The parainfluenza virus 5 is part of a family of viruses (paramyxoviruses) that causes everything from pneumonia, croup and bronchiolitis to cold-like illness and is responsible for many hospitalizations and deaths each year. The results will be published Jan. 5 by the journal Nature.
Details of the protein’s structure in its metastable sta
In a new study of more than 68,000 infants published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, the investigational vaccine Rotateq demonstrated that it can safely prevent 98 percent of severe cases of viral diarrhea and vomiting that account for 2 million hospital visits and 500,000 pediatric deaths each year worldwide.
In one of the largest pre-licensure vaccine clinical trials ever conducted worldwide, research championed by an Eastern Virginia Medical School investigator demonst
A groundbreaking study led by Northwestern University researchers has demonstrated that a protein called alphaB-crystallin, which normally protects cells from stress damage, triggers events that may cause breast cancer when overactive.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women and is responsible for over 400,000 deaths annually in women throughout the world. Most of these deaths are the result of aggressive breast tumors that often fail to respond to current treatments.
Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium scientists from The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, using a mouse model, have discovered the rare stem cell that drives the formation of all breast tissue. This discovery lays an important foundation for understanding how normal breast tissue develops. The identification of the breast stem cell is also likely to provide clues about how breast cancer develops and how rogue cells evade current therapies.
Under normal circumstances, the newly
Stellar occultation allows VLT to determine Charon’s size and to put upper limit on its atmosphere
Observing a very rare occultation of a star by Pluto’s satellite Charon from three different sites, including Paranal, home of the VLT, astronomers were able to determine with great accuracy the radius and density of the satellite to the farthest planet. The density, 1.71 that of water, is indicative of an icy body with about slightly more than half of rocks. The observati
A team of cancer researchers has shown that a gene commonly lost during neuroblastoma tumor formation, one of the most aggressive cancers in babies and children, is in fact a “metastasis suppressor” gene. The researchers, from the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Medical Center and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, also describe how the gene, caspase 8, works.
The findings, published in the January 5 issue of the journal Nature, pr
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine took a step closer to understanding the basis of a severe epilepsy and mental retardation syndrome with work published in the January 5, 2006 issue of the journal Neuron.
Joseph Gleeson, M.D., Director of the Neurogenetics Laboratory at the UCSD School of Medicine and associate professor in the Department of Neurosciences, and his research team have developed a mouse model for a severe brain disorder in newborn chi
A University of Colorado at Boulder study has shown the health of mice carrying a genetic mutation for a disease that is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in people under 30 worsened considerably when the animals were fed a soy-based diet.
Male mice carrying the mutation for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, were severely affected by the soy diet, exhibiting progressively enlarged heart muscles and eventual heart failure, said CU-Boulder Professor Leslie Leinwand. When the m
Even in the largest American cities, a historically maligned beast is thriving, despite scientists’ belief that these mammals intently avoid urban human populations.
This animal’s amazing ability to thrive in metropolitan areas has greatly surprised scientists, says Stanley Gehrt, an assistant professor of environmental and natural resources at Ohio State University. Gehrt is in the sixth year of a multi-year study of coyote behavior in urban Chicago.
Since the study be
New study challenges previous reports of cannibalism as a worldwide selective force
In a new study published by the journal Genome Research, a team of scientists reports that ’mad cow’-like diseases have not been a major force in human history, nor have been cannibalistic rituals that are known to be associated with disease transmission. Prof. Jaume Bertranpetit, a scientist at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and his colleagues used a fresh set of genetic data to s
A secure, semantic-based interoperability framework for exploiting Web service platforms across peer-to-peer networks in the tourism industry hopes to set free the valuable Web-based tourism information that is currently trapped in isolated silos of incompatible databases.
“The tourism industry today is the second largest economic sector, after manufacturing, in the world,” says Professor Asuman Dogac, Director of the Software Research & Development Center in Turkey, and coordinator
You like a certain song and want to hear other tracks like it, but don’t know how to find them? Ending the needle-in-a-haystack problem of searching for music on the Internet or even in your own hard drive is a new audio-based music information retrieval system.
Currently under development by the SIMAC project, it is a major leap forward in the application of semantics to audio content, allowing songs to be described not just by artist, title and genre but by their actual musical
A research group in Bergen has discovered a new form of diabetes. In addition to high blood sugar levels, the disease is characterised by a decrease in pancreatic functioning and reduced fat absorption in the intestine. The discovery may have an impact on the treatment of more usual forms of diabetes.
Researchers from Haukeland University Hospital and the University of Bergen published an article in Nature Genetics, one of the highest ranked journals in the field of biomedicine. The art
IRD researchers have succeeded in the first identification of bats as a potential natural reservoir of Ebola virus. Several epidemics of haemorrhagic fever have raged in the Republic of Congo and Gabon since 2001, hitting both humans and primates simultaneously. The virus transmission route from great apes to humans was already known, yet neither the natural reservoir nor the means of prior viral transmission to these primates had hitherto been identified.
Today scientists from
Donald Brownlee’s heart skipped a beat six years ago when the launch of the Stardust spacecraft didn’t happen as planned. The University of Washington astronomy professor has experienced many other tense times since the historic mission blasted off a day late, and its return to Earth on Jan. 15 will be just one more white-knuckle moment.
Just before 3 a.m. MST, the spacecraft will jettison its return capsule, which will plunge into Earth’s atmosphere at nea
Patients with metastatic melanoma (MM) have new hope, says a recently published study by Mayo Clinic Cancer Center. The study, which shows the combination of paclitaxel and carboplatin (PC) appears to be effective for MM when traditional treatments have failed, is in this month’s issue of Cancer.
“Melanoma is unfortunately one of the few cancers that has become more common over the last few decades, and when it becomes metastatic, there are very few treatment options,” sa
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